The scratching didn't stop. It was a rhythmic, deliberate sound—fingernails on mahogany—that made the hair on my arms stand up.
I stared at the phone screen. I saw you. My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped the device. I wasn't a hero. I was a man who had died in a bathroom stall and been dragged back to life by something that felt like a parasite made of ice.
Warning: Energy Capacity—6%.
The "numbness" the presence had provided was failing. The agony of the poison returned in waves, a dull, throbbing heat behind my ribs that made every breath a chore.
I looked through the peephole. The hallway was empty, but a black card had been slid under the door. A crown of thorns embossed in gold. I opened the door, bracing myself against the frame. Nora Thorne was leaning against the far wall. In the dim light of the corridor, she looked less like a socialite and more like a reaper.
"You're late for your own funeral, Evan," she said. Her voice was velvet over gravel.
"Did my father send you to check the body?" I wheezed.
Nora tilted her head, her slate-gray eyes tracing the tremor in my jaw. "Victor? Your father is downstairs discussing oil futures. He has no idea his 'Golden Son' Marcus just tried to prune the family tree. Marcus doesn't want a scandal, Evan. He wants a quiet vacancy."
Marcus. My stomach dropped. Julian was a bully, but Marcus was a strategist. He didn't break things; he removed them.
"I know your heart stopped," Nora stepped closer, her scent of rain and ozone cutting through the metallic tang in my mouth. "I have a tap into the building's biometric security. You were flatlined for over a minute. And then... something inside you woke up."
She slipped a small, silver vial into my pocket. Her fingers were unnervingly cold. "Marcus is sending a 'medical team' to this room. They'll tell the house you had a heart murmur. They'll take you to a private clinic where you'll be 'treated' until you're no longer a threat to his inheritance. You won't be a brother anymore. You'll be a specimen."
My phone vibrated. Unknown: The elevator just hit your floor. Move.
"Why tell me this?" I asked, my vision blurring.
Nora smiled, and for the first time, I saw the predator behind the beauty. "Because a Cole who hates Coles is the most useful tool a Thorne could ever own. Marcus is playing for the crown, Evan. I'm playing for the whole kingdom. If you stay here, you're a lab rat. If you leave, you're a ghost. Which one sounds more like a Cole to you?"
She vanished into the shadows just as the distant ding of the elevator echoed. I didn't have time to think. I lunged for the balcony, vaulting over the stone railing and lowering myself to the floor below. My fingers screamed as I gripped the cold masonry, swinging my body onto a lower terrace just as the sound of my bedroom door hissed open above me.
From my crouched position one floor down, I heard the soft, muffled footsteps of several men. No heavy boots. Just the squeak of rubber soles.
"Target is missing," a flat voice whispered from the balcony above. "The bed is cold. He went over the rail."
"Find him," a second voice replied. "And remember—Marcus wants him intact. If he's conscious, use the needles."
I didn't wait to hear more. I slipped into the shadows of the estate gardens, disappearing into the rain.
Forty minutes later, I was blocks away from the Plaza, stumbling toward the only place I felt human. The Iron Lung. It was a basement gym in the industrial district, smelling of stale sweat and old blood. To the world, I was Evan Cole, the billionaire's stray. Here, I was just 'Ghost'—the kid who took hits until the other guy got tired of swinging.
I pushed through the heavy steel door. "Silas? You here?"
Old Man Silas didn't look up from the hand wraps he was rolling. "You look like hell, kid. The Coles finally find out you like getting punched for fun?"
"They found out I'm still breathing," I said, collapsing onto a bench. I pulled the silver vial Nora had given me from my pocket. It sat there, cold and heavy.
Priority: Consume—
The voice was back, a low growl at the base of my brain. My hand trembled as I uncorked the vial and swallowed. It tasted like liquid lightning and ash. My spine snapped straight, and the fatigue was overwritten by a cold, mechanical focus.
My hearing sharpened. I could hear a car idling at the curb outside. Not an SUV—a plain, gray sedan that blended into the city grime.
"Silas," I whispered. "Get in the back office. Now."
The front door opened. Three men stepped in. They looked like commuters—jeans, dark windbreakers, caps pulled low. But they moved with a synchronized, predatory grace. One of them kept his hand inside his jacket, his eyes scanning the room with clinical disinterest.
They didn't say a word. They spread out, using the heavy bags and weight racks for cover.
I felt a sudden, violent twitch in my neck. It wasn't my muscle moving; it was the presence pulling the wire. My head snapped to the left a fraction of a second before a high-velocity sedative dart hissed through the air, embedding itself into the wooden pillar exactly where my throat had been.
I didn't wait for the second shot. I lunged into the shadows, my heart hammering a rhythm that was no longer entirely my own